#yakusha-e

Look at his hands. Both gripping the collar of that indigo kimono, pulling it tight - not adjusting it, bracing himself. Whatever Danshichi Kurobei is about to do, he's already decided. This print by Utagawa Sadamasu (II) - "Danshichi Kurobei, Full-Length" - depicts one of kabuki's most notorious characters, a man whose story ends in murder during a summer festival. The kimono hiked above bare feet, the katana tucked behind his back, that red cloth at the waist - every detail is a stage direction locked in pigment. Sadamasu worked in the Osaka-Kyoto tradition that rivaled Edo's print culture, yet this sheet somehow crossed oceans to land in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Tens of thousands of ukiyo-e prints flooded into European hands during the Japonisme wave - sometimes as prized collectibles, sometimes literally as packing material wrapped around ceramics. Bottom left corner: 貞升画 - Sadamasu ga. The quietest mark on the sheet, and the only thing that outlasted the actor, the stage, and the performance it once advertised. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Actors Ichikawa Ebizô V as Saitô Tarôzaemon (R), Onoe Baikô IV as Nagai's wife Hanazono (L), Utagwa Kunisada, 1847

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A Memorial Portrait of Onoe Kikugoro IV, Yoshitoshi, 1860

Utagawa Toyokuni, Utaemon Nakamura III as Genzō Takebe, c. 1801.  

Black hair falling like ink poured from a well. Pale skin catching no light, holding no shadow. Rust and iron at the wrists. Utagawa Kunimasa's "Bust Portrait of Iwai Kumesaburo" is an actor frozen mid-becoming - someone else's body worn like armor. And speaking of armor: those hexagonal chain-mail kote, the green-laced dō plates, the weapon shaft rising diagonally behind the shoulder. A warrior's costume. But the face beneath the white hachimaki belongs to an onnagata - a male actor specializing in female roles. Kumesaburo was one of the most celebrated onnagata of the 1790s. So here's your question: Kunimasa studied under one of ukiyo-e's most famous masters. Who was his teacher? A) Kitagawa Utamaro B) Tōshūsai Sharaku C) Utagawa Toyokuni I D) Katsushika Hokusai The family name gives it away - in ukiyo-e, your school name was your inheritance. The answer is C. Kunimasa was Toyokuni I's most gifted pupil, and he was dead by twenty-seven. This print - now in the Rijksmuseum - is one of the few things that outlasted him. The bokashi clouds greying behind the figure like a curtain about to close. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Here's the thing about reproducing ukiyo-e that nobody talks about: the original woodblock print was already a reproduction. Utagawa Toyokuni's "Actor Ichikawa Yaozō III and Poem" from the series Actors in Paired Mirrors was never a unique object. A designer drew it, a carver cut the blocks, a printer pressed pigment onto mulberry paper - division of labor, edition after edition. The kabuki fan in 1790s Edo bought this the way you'd grab a magazine. That dark overrobe with its swirling cloud patterns, the coral-red underlayer, the peony blossoms picked out in pink and gold - each color required a separate carved block, each impression hand-burnished with a baren. A poem by Ryōhōan drifts in cursive beside the actor's face like a second voice sharing the stage. The original was already mechanical. So what does a modern archival pigment reproduction actually betray? Honestly? Less than you'd think. Pigment-based inks on warm-toned paper can hold those five or six tonal shifts in Yaozō's face without collapsing them into muddy grey. The red kumadori lines at his eye corners stay sharp. The calligraphic poem keeps its gestural life instead of dissolving into blur. The print was born for paper. Now at the Rijksmuseum - still performing. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Actors Onoe Baikô IV as Shizuka Gozen (R), Nakamura Utaemon VI as Satô Tadanobu (L), Utagawa Kunisada, 1847